In addition to announcing the new Family Vault feature that allows Prime members to share their unlimited photo storage with others, Amazon has vastly improved their photos interface through the web and mobile apps. All photos uploaded are now automatically analyzed to make finding photos of people, places, and specific things a lot easier.

A new People section will group together photos of the same person through facial recognition software. You can name the different faces found in order to directly use a person’s name when searching for specific photos. Photos are also analyzed for objects and things, so you can enter the word “beach” for example, and see all photos taken at the beach. GPS data embedded within photos, like those taken on smartphones, is also detected and available to sort photos by locations. Facial detection for people, object detection for things, and GPS data for locations can all be used together to locate the exact photo you’re looking for. The feature is enabled by default, but you can disable it under settings if you prefer not having your photos analyzed.

4 comments

Great, except they removed all of my Photo Albums that I had sorted using the old “Photo & Video” page. Amazon should really “warn” people of these friggin’ changes before just friggin’ changing things. Some people rely on this stuff. Super disappointing.